


None of Them Will Comfort Me Tonight

by nonisland



Series: amie Éponine [4]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Friendship, Gen, Not Pastiche, contemplation of mortality, five fewer unambiguously queer classical references than hugo drops in 3.4.1 And Yet Still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23923024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: “We can still know the rest,” Courfeyrac says, flinging himself into another chair. “We wouldn’t go to fight on an empty stomach, and there’s no need to go to fight on an empty heart, either.”“You’ve given yourself wholly to the revolution.” Combeferre’s voice is gentle, but still final. “I think you’re asking too much of Marius, and if your excuse is that you’re asking no more of him than of yourself then I think you’re asking too much of yourself as well.”Or, Enjolras addresses—or is addressed by—the concepts of types of love other thanphilia, of having a life before the revolution, and of whether their little lives do count at all.
Relationships: Combeferre & Courfeyrac & Enjolras (Les Misérables), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: amie Éponine [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705690
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	None of Them Will Comfort Me Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> **Content note:** This fic contains extensive discussion around a kind of very casual expectation of one’s own mortality. In my opinion it’s about on the same level as some of the grimmer bits of the libretto and falls well short of a fair portion of what’s in the novel, but your mileage may vary.
> 
> Almost directly follows the previous fic in this series, but if you skipped that the only really urgent note is that I’ve played a little with the timeline, landing somewhere between movie/musical and book/more direct adaptations; this is June 1, with Lamarque not yet dead.
> 
> (Movie or musical? Who can say, at this point. I have obviously leaned on the novel to supplement the “we strive toward a larger goal / our little lives don’t count at all” and to flesh out the much-abridged characters.)
> 
> Title again from the Carpenters’ “I Need to Be in Love.”
> 
> * * *

“I still can’t believe you told Marius that _no one cares about his soul_ ,” Courfeyrac says. He’s in restless motion, circling around and around the corner of the Musain that Enjolras and Combeferre still occupy. The others have trickled away, a few at a time—Courfeyrac had left, too, but now he’s come back, seemingly for no purpose other than to find fault with Enjolras.

Enjolras, absorbed in counting and re-counting the munitions available to them, comparing lists and calculating which of their allies can be trusted to give all that they say they can, doesn’t answer at first.

“It wasn’t your kindest moment,” Combeferre agrees, which means they are going to talk about it now.

“I could have worded it better,” Enjolras says, looking up, “but it _doesn’t_ matter that he thinks he’s fallen in love with some girl he met in the street.”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchange glances. Courfeyrac shakes his head and opens one hand, ceding the conversation. He’s under a shadow tonight, which is not making Enjolras feel any _more_ charitably towards Marius’s nonsense, though it would be nonsense regardless.

“Enjolras—” Combeferre starts.

“I don’t care,” Enjolras says. They should have the guns they need, or at least he thinks they should—it will depend on how many of the people of Paris answer their call. Ammunition…he’s not as sure about that, and that will doubtless be the ruin of them in the end. “None of us have time for that kind of sentiment right now.”

Courfeyrac says, “It doesn’t necessarily take time to be in love.” He’s not arguing; he’s not making any grand, emphatic point. If he weren’t pacing Enjolras might wonder if Combeferre had twinned himself somehow, with mirrors or beams of light.

“They’re hardly going to put Lamarque’s funeral off, whenever it comes, so Marius can run around Paris trying to find a girl he’s never even spoken to,” Enjolras says, pushing his chair back from the table. He thinks better on his feet himself. “It’s a distraction. It doesn’t help him, or us.”

“I think they exchanged a few words,” Courfeyrac says. Now he sounds almost as bright as usual, finally, but Enjolras has known him for years: there’s effort in it.

Enjolras hesitates. This isn’t his strength, or even Combeferre’s, really; Courfeyrac is the one whom they both rely on for anything to do with any individual person instead of with the people. “Do you need anything?” he asks carefully. He doesn’t know if he would have dared, in front of the whole group, but his two oldest friends won’t consider it faltering.

“No, I already—what I need _right now_ is for you to listen to yourself, so we can go home.” Courfeyrac frowns at Enjolras, a rare and unpleasant sight. “You know that just because we survived the Three Glorious Days doesn’t mean we’ll survive the next few. You’ve reminded us of that often enough. If you’re all right denying yourself the things you want from life now in the hopes of having them later, that’s your concern, but it’s not fair to ask the same of everyone else.”

“I’m not denying myself the things I want from life now in the hopes of having them later,” Enjolras says. He looks to Combeferre for support and gets a blank look back. “I don’t have any expectation of living until all of the future that we’re fighting for is here. This uprising won’t be enough, and perhaps not the next either. At some point my luck will run out, and that point will be before that new world dawns.”

Combeferre, very tiredly, says, “That’s not better.”

“That’s _worse_ ,” Courfeyrac says. “You’re saying that you’re never allowed to be happy while there’s still injustice in the world to fight.”

Enjolras considers it from every angle. “I don’t have time,” he offers, finally. “You’re all depending on me. If I can weigh those considerations and make that decision, I don’t see that it’s unreasonable to ask anyone else to do the same—I’m only asking the same thing of Marius that I’m asking of myself.”

“You don’t ask it of me,” Courfeyrac says, spinning to a complete halt in the middle of the room. “Isn’t that unjust?”

“No,” Enjolras says. “It’s not—Marius is _distracted_. You don’t wander into meetings babbling about pretty strangers, and as for him…” He frowns, and tries to hide his uncertainty. It’s different; he can’t articulate how it is different, except that Courfeyrac has always been both reliable and necessary.

Courfeyrac says, “Think about the Sacred Band of Thebes, if you would.”

Enjolras is thrown back to the time when he’d paid more attention to his studies than revolution—it seems like decades ago, more than the whole length of his life. He remembers reading Plato in the Greek and learning that Plato in the French is censored at the whims of arbitrary morality, by the Church and the aristocrats who lean on each other for support, by the whole rotten system that starves people of knowledge as much as bread.

“They were heroes,” Courfeyrac goes on. “The liberators of Sparta, and all because someone decided that lovers would never abandon each other in battle.”

“‘When fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world,’” Combeferre quotes, rubbing his eyes. It’s late; they’d been plotting for a while before Marius started waxing poetic about the girl.

“And if you allow that, then you _must_ allow it’s possible for love not to be a distraction,” Courfeyrac says, his sincerity lighting him up in earnest now, “for there to be people who use it to spur themselves to glory instead of—what would you say? As an excuse to turn away from the work that needs to be done?”

Enjolras starts pacing too, at cross-angles to Courfeyrac. It’s too much to hold still for this. “It’s not about it being an _excuse_ , but I don’t have time—”

“You can’t decide you never have time,” Combeferre puts in, in that final voice that means he thinks that Enjolras is being unreasonable again. Enjolras is starting to suspect that Combeferre is right an uncomfortable amount of the time, but he’s still not prepared to cede this particular argument yet, even though if Combeferre has taken Courfeyrac’s part instead of his own that changes Enjolras’s ground more than he likes. “Do you think people deserve to love in the future that we’re fighting for?”

“Of course,” Enjolras says. “They deserve love, and health, and peace, and prosperity, and every other thing they’re deprived of right now. Comfort. Happiness.”

Combeferre is still sitting, but it doesn’t feel like Enjolras is looking down to meet his eyes. “So if you’re fighting to bring about this future, how can you create it without knowing what it’s like?”

Enjolras hesitates. His glance falls on the lists of reports: guns, cartridges, bullets and powder alone; allies among the workers, the students, the gamins, the refugees, the women, a tentative handful of important men; streets with defensible buildings and loose stone for the barricades. “We don’t know what peace is like.”

“We can still know the rest,” Courfeyrac says, flinging himself into another chair. “We wouldn’t go to fight on an empty stomach, and there’s no need to go to fight on an empty heart, either.”

“You’ve given yourself wholly to the revolution.” Combeferre’s voice is gentle, but still final. “I think you’re asking too much of Marius, and if your excuse is that you’re asking no more of him than of yourself then I think you’re asking too much of yourself as well.”

Courfeyrac swings his feet up onto the seat of the chair opposite. “I _know_ you’re asking too much of yourself. Forget Plato, then—look at Joly and Laigle and Musichetta. Look at Éponine, who’s only here in the first place because of Marius. Look at me, if you like; I don’t scorn sentiment and I think I’m better off for it. You’ve never complained, have you?”

“No,” Enjolras admits. He values Courfeyrac’s perspective enormously; it’s irreplaceable. “But that doesn’t—”

“I’d be less without it,” Courfeyrac says. “Not just passion, but all manner of the kinds of things you think are frivolous. Wine, and dancing, and occasionally giving up and setting particularly egregious pamphlets on fire instead of addressing their points one by one.”

Enjolras can’t help but smile a little at that.

“I’ve been known to spend a night at the opera myself,” Combeferre adds, “though not recently.”

“You have _not_ ,” Courfeyrac says, turning to stare at him in disbelief.

Combeferre shrugs. “I like Mozart especially.”

“You go in the cloak? And the hat?” Courfeyrac is staring, clearly trying to envision Combeferre in full evening dress and just as clearly taken aback by whatever he’s envisioning.

It is a little strange, though unless Enjolras’s imagination is just failing him it can’t be as strange as Courfeyrac seems to think.

“I endure opera-goers,” Combeferre says. “I endure them better when I don’t care about the opera in question, but that seems like a waste. But, you know, even with them, I _do_ fight for that—for art, and music, and the right of the people to have that kind of joy in their lives.”

“Of course art matters,” says Enjolras, who has been to neither theatre nor concert hall nor museum since he came to Paris. “It has a powerful influence. But—“

Courfeyrac sighs, dramatically enough himself to make up for Enjolras’s recent lack of theatre. “No, it has a powerful influence _because it matters_. It’s exactly the same thing as with love—if it didn’t matter at all, nobody would care.”

“But we should…” Enjolras trails off, and resents the fact that he doesn’t have an end to that sentence. He’s been doing more and more of that lately—now, when he most needs to be sure. “We should be able to manage without it. We _should_ be able to take strength from our cause—”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre says, very gently indeed.

Enjolras sits down again. “I _do_ take strength from our cause,” he says. “I don’t—”

“You don’t laugh, is what you don’t do,” Courfeyrac says.

“Jean Prouvaire doesn’t laugh,” Enjolras retorts. “I haven’t seen you confronting him about it.”

Combeferre fights down a yawn. “Jean Prouvaire is naturally quiet. You’re anything but.”

“If you won’t shout and wave your arms around you should at least stand,” Courfeyrac tells him. “It helps when the hour’s this late.”

“What I should at least do is go to bed,” Combeferre says. He looks pointedly at Enjolras. “As should you—you won’t do anyone any good if you’re falling asleep at the barricades.”

“Also, sleep is good,” Courfeyrac says with suspicious patience. “You have a monk’s cell for yourself, don’t you, to go with your monkish celibacy.”

Enjolras considers his rooms. “The mattress is a good one,” he says, because it is. He neglects the basic needs of his body as little as possible; Combeferre is entirely correct that he can do no good when weak from hunger or clumsy from exhaustion.

“Ah, the _mattress_ ,” Courfeyrac says, nodding hugely. “Of course.”

Courfeyrac’s rooms are a joyous clutter—the pallet always ready for when someone is in need of a bed, the lone chair that he’ll happily offer a guest, the waistcoats and cravats hanging brightly on their pegs, the desk swept carelessly bare, prints and newspaper clippings pinned to the walls. Combeferre has laid in stools so as many as four guests can have a place to sit, and as far as Enjolras can tell every free wall in his rooms is covered with either bookshelves or sketches, the bookshelves densely stocked and the sketches exquisite.

There’s a reason they have never meet in Enjolras’s rooms, even for conversations too small and too secret for the Café Musain before revolution began to rumble beneath the streets of Paris.

He doesn’t mind, really, all things considered. It would be foolish to mind, when they can meet just as well anywhere else. He’s never brought Les Amis the same things as Combeferre and Courfeyrac have. He knows this—his dedication is his strength, as they each have their own.

It _is_ late, he reminds himself. It’s been a long day, out in the heat during the worst of it; there are more long days to come. They’re thinking, all of them, about the price they may have to pay when Lamarque dies and Paris rises. He made sure of that himself. If he’s getting a little sentimental too, well, perhaps it’s only to be expected after all.

“Enjolras?” Combeferre asks.

Enjolras looks at them, weary in the lamplight: Combeferre, unfailingly thoughtful; Courfeyrac, unceasingly vibrant. He thinks about the rest of his friends, who will be at his side when the barricades rise: about Feuilly’s quiet patience, Éponine’s stubborn courage, Marius’s persistence, Prouvaire’s sweetness, Bahorel’s enthusiasm, Laigle and Joly’s warmth, Grantaire’s…well, Grantaire has stayed with them all this time, at least, however little he cares for them and their cause. His death would leave an empty space too.

It’s not the time to be thinking about empty spaces, or friendship. It’s not the time for Enjolras to wonder whether he really should have been listening more all these years—whether there’s something that he’s missing after all. It is farther from that time than it has ever been. If he even could have afforded it once, he can’t any more.

“Enjolras,” Combeferre says again, a little louder. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Enjolras says. He shakes his head to clear it. “We should go, as you said. It’s late, and we need all the sleep we can get while we still can.”

He finds his coat, though not his hat. Combeferre, who always knows where his things are, has already gotten himself ready and caught Courfeyrac by the arm, saying something too low for Enjolras to catch. Courfeyrac shakes his head but doesn’t pull away.

Enjolras pauses at the top of the stairs, looking back at them again. But he’s not needed here—wasn’t even asked to stay—and they’ll need him awake tomorrow, and the next day and the next, for as long as Liberty needs a flame and a sword.

He turns and goes down, and out into the darkened street.

**Author's Note:**

> A few places here obviously riff off of a couple of specific passages in the novel—Enjolras’s speech after he executes Le Cabuc; and to a lesser extent Bossuet’s remarks about love inspiring courage, which I took on a detour (sorry for cutting your part down even further, Bossuet); as well, obviously, as the eponymous section of “Enjolras and His Lieutenants”.
> 
> I have no Greek, so Combeferre’s quote about the Sacred Band of Thebes is from Benjamin Jowett’s translation of Plato’s _Symposium_. I confess to extrapolating a little from English history: I don’t know for sure whether French translators engaged in the same linguistic censorship as English ones, but it was certainly the case that English scholars needed access to the original Greek (and Latin) texts to not get “Platonic love” as non-romantic, non-sexual love. Enjolras (“an only son, and rich”) would have had a classical education, as Hugo did, and would therefore have had that access to Greek that many people did not.
> 
> The cell/celibacy pun doesn’t work at all in French but my options here are to pun in English when I can or to laboriously construct French puns which will be completely incomprehensible when rendered in English.


End file.
